---
layout: "intro"
page_title: "Installing Serf"
sidebar_current: "gettingstarted-install"
---

# Install Serf

Serf must first be installed on every node that will be a member of a
Serf cluster. To make installation easy, Serf is distributed as a
[binary package](/downloads.html) for all supported platforms and
architectures. This page will not cover how to compile Serf from
source.

## Installing Serf

To install Serf, find the [appropriate package](/downloads.html) for
your system and download it. Serf is packaged as a "zip" archive.

After downloading Serf, unzip the package. Copy the `serf` binary to
somewhere on the PATH so that it can be executed. On Unix systems,
`~/bin` and `/usr/local/bin` are common installation directories,
depending on if you want to restrict the install to a single user or
expose it to the entire system. On Windows systems, you can put it wherever
you would like.

## Verifying the Installation

After installing Serf, verify the installation worked by opening a new
terminal session and checking that `serf` is available. By executing
`serf` you should see help output similar to that below:

```
$ serf
usage: serf [--version] [--help] <command> [<args>]

Available commands are:
    agent          Runs a Serf agent
    event          Send a custom event through the Serf cluster
    force-leave    Forces a member of the cluster to enter the "left" state
    join           Tell Serf agent to join cluster
    keygen         Generates a new encryption key
    leave          Gracefully leaves the Serf cluster and shuts down
    members        Lists the members of a Serf cluster
    monitor        Stream logs from a Serf agent
    version        Prints the Serf version
```

If you get an error that `serf` could not be found, then your PATH
environmental variable was not setup properly. Please go back and ensure
that your PATH variable contains the directory where Serf was installed.

Otherwise, Serf is installed and ready to go!